Company keys
A company key is required to gain access to a company premises, unless you are a visitor and need to ring the doorbell. People who are granted access and the authorisations they are issued can vary considerably, as you will see below.
Who receives a company key?
At first glance, it is clear who should definitely receive a company key: owners, managing directors and, in most cases, also the employees who work at the location. There may be people who receive the key who do not form part of the company. In this case, there is a need to consider which external service providers should have access to the company's premises. For example, one case would be cleaning staff who work on the premises regularly and therefore require a company key. There might also be service personnel, such as IT experts, who routinely perform maintenance. Or suppliers who need to access the warehouse unaccompanied. In all these cases, it is beneficial if such providers also receive a company key.
Not just a single key
“Company key” may sound like a single key, but one key is often not enough, especially in larger companies. Depending on the locking system, access through the company entrance and to your own workstation may already require different keys. You might need other company keys, depending on your area of responsibility. Server rooms, storage rooms and archives may all also require separate keys, so a truly big bunch of keys is needed instead of a single key.
What to bear in mind when using a company key
What is crucial when handing over keys to residential property can also apply to company keys: the handover should be recorded as accurately as possible. It is important to know what parties are handing over company keys. The company and key recipients should be clearly named. Since more than just one key may be handed over, as already stated, there is a need to specify exactly which keys are handed over and how many of them so that administrators can keep track of them, even at a much later date.
Logging the actual handover of a company key is one aspect, but it is also beneficial to record what will happen if a key is lost despite due care. Who is liable? Where must the loss be reported? What are the consequences?
Time-consuming for everyone involved: the loss of keys
It is highly inconvenient if a company key is lost. What is already considered annoying in the residential sector becomes even more complicated in the professional sphere: if a lock needs to be replaced because someone may have unauthorised access to the company due to a key being lost, this not only affects the key holder in question, but the entire company. If there is a locking system, the consequences are even more far-reaching since all locking cylinders and keys would need to be replaced so that every employee receives new keys. As you can imagine, losing a company key would therefore prove very expensive.
For greater security: the digital locking system
Expensive key losses can be avoided by opting for the benefits of a digital locking system. It already offers an advantage at an earlier stage: with a digital locking system, the inhibition for reporting a loss of a company key is already reduced in advance. In this case, “key” is the wrong word as a company key is actually a digital locking medium, such as a transponder, onto which all access authorisations can be saved. This means that, although you may have many authorisations, you only have one credential instead of a large set of keys. If this “company key” should be lost, it can be disabled in the system with just a few clicks of the mouse.